Insurance Lobby Study Cites Large Gifts to Politicians by Trial Lawyers

Apparently trying to show that their rivals wield more clout than they do, insurance lobbyists have prepared a study showing that trial lawyers have contributed millions of dollars to key politicians and advocates of placing controls on the insurance industry.

The political action committee of the California Trial Lawyers Assn. and lawyers belonging to the association gave a combined $3,345,217 in 1986 to state legislators, Democratic candidates Tom Bradley and John Van de Kamp, the No on 51 campaign and the liberal Supreme Court justices, according to the study by the state’s leading insurance lobbyists.

The study of campaign contributions, released by the Assn. of California Insurance Companies, was undertaken as a kind of rebuttal to a Common Cause study last year showing insurer political contributions totaling $1,621,326 during the two-year period ending in July, 1986, to legislators and Gov. George Deukmejian.

Groups at Odds

The insurers and the trial lawyers are at odds over remedies for high insurance prices, with the insurers urging changes in the civil justice system to reduce lawsuits and huge settlements and the lawyers insisting on regulating and reducing insurance company profits. Each side accuses the other of responsibility for recent insurance price rises.

Neither side has gained much in the Legislature, although both have succeeded in preventing action adverse to their interests.

“We commissioned this study because we were tired of hearing charges by the consumer groups, some of whom are funded by trial lawyers, that the insurance industry was ‘buying’ the Legislature with huge campaign contributions,” said George W. Tye, executive manager of the lobbying association.

“We know that no one buys the Legislature--not us, not the CTLA (trial lawyers), not big business, not anyone. Campaign contributions may help in gaining access to a legislator to explain your position on a bill, but votes are not sold or bargained for.”

Cite Contributions

According to the study, the trial lawyers’ own political action committee gave $653,245 in all legislative races last year, $69,250 to Bradley’s unsuccessful campaign for governor, $6,600 to Van de Kamp’s successful drive for reelection as attorney general and $236,400 to support incumbent state Supreme Court justices.

Meanwhile, about 5,000 lawyers belonging to the trial lawyers’ association gave on an individual or law-firm basis $85,588 to Bradley, $51,279 to Van de Kamp, $1,540,570 to the No on 51 campaign opposing the insurer-backed initiative that cut back application of the joint and several doctrine in lawsuits, and $702,285 to the Supreme Court justices.

The grand total of all these contributions was $3,345,217. But this figure, Tye said, is too conservative, because the insurer study did not try to identify individual lawyers’ contributions to the legislators.

Browne Greene, president of the trial lawyers’ group, did not challenge any of the figures released by the insurance lobbyists.

‘Apples and Oranges’

But he did say that, “I think they’re attempting to compare apples and oranges. They’re looking at different time periods. They’re lumping in different campaigns. No on 51 is included on our side of the ledger, but nothing of the pro-51 (group) was reported by the Common Cause study for their side.” Proposition 51, passed by voters last year, limits the liability of certain defendants in damage suits.

“More important,” Greene said, “their allies--the doctors, the manufacturers, chambers of commerce, business interests in general--the people who are almost always on their side and are making major contributions of their own, they’re not listed.”

In the statement releasing the insurers’ study, Tye also made the point that in addition to the contributions listed for the trial lawyers, the lawyers also helped finance what he termed certain consumer “front groups.” He said the lawyers also underwrite “a very active Sacramento lobbying operation, an extensive public relations operation, and they have hired a very expensive political consultant for a possible initiative next year.”

The trial lawyers, he added, “are aligned with the so-called consumer groups on virtually all issues related to insurance. Notwithstanding this, the consumer groups continue to portray their situation as a ‘David vs. Goliath’ battle, with the insurance industry cast as Goliath and the consumer groups as David. This study proves that the consumer groups have Goliath’s big brother on their side.”

Accuses Lawyers

The lawyers, he contended, are making what he termed “incredible financial commitments” because they “are interested in maximizing the number and size of lawsuits in California” and in “maintaining their ability to make payments on their Mercedes-Benz.”

One organization Tye termed a front group for the lawyers was the Insurance Consumer Action Network. Its president, Steven Miller, responded Friday: “The fact is, George Tye knows it’s not true. . . . My organization is dedicated to representing insurance consumers and I’m proud of the job we do in that regard. I’d like him to prove his allegations or get off them.”